Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Friday, August 31, 2012

The government has had to shelve Rodney Hide’s ‘old’ Spending Cap Bill because the Minister of Taking by Totalitarian Means, Peter Dunne, won’t support it.

This is a travesty.

Before continuing it’s important to state that the Bill itself was pure doublespeak, regardless. It only claimed to limit spending increases to the rate of inflation (which Government/Reserve Bank, have a surprising amount of influence over) and population increases. So it was not a spending cap at all, just an attempted, largely symbolic, brake on the rate of government spending increases, across spending that currently sits on a massive 44% of GDP.

But symbolism does have a place in the context of this Bill, and the Minister of Taking not signing up to it has an additional symbolism again, because for him it is a conflict of interest as it bears on taxpayers, who should not just be worried, but angry, about this. He is effectively saying he does not have to responsibly constrain spending, because as Minister of Taxing he can simply force entry and sack the bank accounts of private enterprise and individuals. And handing the temptation to spend, with the means to achieve it, to a crusading politician is like letting a kid immured of Generation Obesity, loose in a lolly shop.

Mr Dunne, of course, doesn’t see it like this. His spin is, quote: ‘...the spending cap was ''part of an unnecessary right-wing agenda'' and was not consistent with constitutional principles which prevented one parliament binding another.’ Oh dear.

Quite apart from the fact you joined up to a right-wing government with supposedly (though mostly laughingly) a right-wing agenda, so showing ‘coalition’ is really just about the electorate double-cross and hypocrisy, this is symbolic, yet, of something far worse, because it’s philosophical. For this demonstrates the Minister has his head so far up the politick, he’s blinded to where his feet are; trampling on the bowed and broken heads of those current, and as yet unborn, taxpayers, this irresponsible no-constraints spending binds to tax slavery, and to his department. Aren't their interests what he is representing?

Taxpayers have to get the feeling that the Fortress of Legislation, where ominously Mr Cunliffe is waiting in the wings for 2014, has become a thing unto itself for the careers and egos of the compromised crusaders holed up in there who force the theocracy of state on the lives of free men. Though that's democracy, faulty; not one of those crusaders represent me, albeit I'm one of the serfs forced to pay for them, and the disastrous consequences of their decisions. Even taking this last week, none who daily pontificate and barbarically joust in there seem to understand the mere fact that they are debating the right they arrogantly feel they have to meddle in the grown-up relationships of consenting adults who are harming no one, and soon on whether, should I get struck down, with no quality of life, and thus wanting to die with dignity, my wife holding my hand without fear of criminal prosecution, is in itself, an offence to free, civilised men. There is no debate needed on this by our Masters. Neither of those issues has anything to do with them, or anyone outside ourselves and our loved ones: they are matters solely of personal sovereignty. The fact politicians are debating such fundamental issues attaching to the individual, is further proof we do not own our lives in this kindy of a country.

And if you want my opinion to end with: this doublespeak spending cap, which is not even a cap on spending, is next to useless, even if in some future period it gets in, no thanks to Mr Dunne; government spending needs to be slashed before we join Europe and the US, as another cot case born of Keynesian socialism, and the social chaos that now entails for them. It's time to sack the Fortress from its foundations - in our minds - and reclaim our lives as sovereign states unto ourselves. And so with this crick in my neck from paying Tuesday’s provisional tax instalment, I’ll go off and do something constructive, trying not to think of Mr Dunne in his lolly shop of my wallet …

Why the hell do you want any contract recognised by the state? Because that's what the state is for.

Good argument from PC, but when it comes to the contractual aspects of gay marriage ... that's what the Civil Union Act 2004 is for.

It's interesting to read that

Another [proposed amendment] was to replace it with a "civil relationships" bill that would allow any two people to register any personal relationship and to gain joint property rights (moved by National MP Richard Worth, a consistent opponent of the bill).

Sounds exactly right to me.

I've never read the Bill of Rights ... Suspect a good deal of it would be statist, rather than protecting individual.

Civilisation is a movement toward privacy, an Orwellian surveillance state the opposite, and tax legislation, especially tax administration, has become the legislation and administration of surveillance and authoritarian rule, in contravention of the rule of law, and common decency. IR

If the Founding Fathers could see how freedom is bound, again, under the iron fist of our taxing authorities; New Zealand's IRD, America's IRS, UK's HMRC, a secret police operating in every country, there would be a Western Spring.

This blog is the only form my protest can take, hoping not to become a squashed blug on the windscreen of state.

Disclaimer: If you pay anything other than the correct amount of tax - as hard as that can be to calculate under our mess of tax law - then you're a bloody idiot. The IR's are all-powerful: they are not a construct of a free, voluntary, civilised classical liberalism, they are a relic of totalitarianism. You have no liberty or privacy from the IR's, you have no legal defence against them, you cannot refuse to be interrogated, you cannot question their actions or seek judicial review holding them to account, even the burden of proof has been turned against the taxpayer; before the law, though you have done nothing wrong, you have less rights than a murderer or rapist, and this Department has been charged by the Fortress of Legislation to systematically eavesdrop and investigate all of us. Don't mess with them. And let me put on record, the IRD staffers I deal with daily are ‘good’ people, I have no complaint whatsoever on a personal/personable level; but this blog is about the principles involved, and it remains my hope there is enough of a classical liberal ethic left, admitting debate and ' difference', that this blog is taken only for the contained - to these pages - protest that it is. For let me spell it out - you, Big Brother State, have won: I.Am.Scared.Of.You.You bet I am. But there's this loon in me that can't seem to shut up. (You're lucky, my poor wife has to live with it).

Copyright

All posts copyright Mark Hubbard and Life Behind the IRon Drape. Contents may be reproduced without permission provided credit is given to the author, it is not altered in any way, the context is made clear and a link is provided to the original.